


Heart and Mind

by Zabbers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Possible Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is felled by his greatest weakness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart and Mind

By the time John catches up, the man is long gone, and Sherlock is sprawled face-down on the dank pavement, the tails of his coat spread out behind him like the limp wings of a great grey heron shot out of the sky. John rushes down the alleyway, terrified as always that this is it, that it’s over, that even though he heard no shot, Sherlock has been shot, or knifed, strangled, struck. 

In the moment before he drops to the ground to assess the damage, it occurs to John that there is something inappropriately beautiful about the elegance of the lines, the way the light over a back kitchen door highlights Sherlock’s temple as though bathing it in moonlight and leaves the edges of him in darkness as though to blend into the shadows. But up close, Sherlock’s face is rigid, his cheek and hair muddied by the puddle he’s fallen into. His eyes are open, but they aren’t looking, they’re fixed, and this, more than anything else, constricts John’s chest as he reaches for Sherlock’s pulse.

~

In the end, it wasn’t the baddie that got him, not directly. There’s no blood, no bruise, no violent struggle or sudden turning of cornered, panicked man with a blunt object, a bat or a fist. Lestrade’s team run the murderer to ground and there’s no sign he’d even stopped when Sherlock fell, or known that he might get away.

There’s a hole in Sherlock’s heart. Maybe it’s the price of turning out to have one, that there’s a piece of it missing where Irene Adler or Mycroft or some part of his childhood should have been, that it is the one part of him that could have a flaw at all. Through this chink in his armor a weapon of his own making penetrated, a clot that should have circulated through his body, where it could be broken down, instead expressed straight to his brain, and like the most accurate of bullets, found its target there. Through his most vulnerable organ, Sherlock himself has attacked his most precious, and of course, because he is Sherlock Holmes, the attack is perfect, precise, devastating.

There’s a hole in Sherlock’s heart that they never knew was there, and an embolism in his brain precipitated by a chase like any other chase of Sherlock’s life, except that now John knows each one was a spin of the barrel, and now the gun is spent, and damn the Russians for giving their name to such a foolish game.

If Sherlock had known he’d been playing, he would have reveled in it.


End file.
